Last night was finally the time that H2G2 completed its trip through the etha and landed after testing from a dedicated team of, well put honestly, friends. The doors were flung open at the new, old address of www.h2g2.com easy to remember.
After 10 years with the BBC the collaborative effort (how very h2g2) of Robbie Stamp, Aly and Brian Larholm, and the h2g2 Community Consortium. Robbie was a close friend of Douglas Adams and helped set up the site back in 1999 as well as producing the Hitchhikers' movie. Aly and Brian have a decade of social media expertise and wanted to bring that to an already existing community site and the Community Consortium were just a bunch of guys you know, and guyesses who didn't want to see the place they had known for up to 12 years disappear without a fight once the BBC decided to sell it off.
In the end all three banded together and offered the BBC a deal that would maintain the integrity of the site which had existed before the BBC lifeboat came along to rescue it from the Digital Village, after the period known to researchers as Rupert.
The much shorter transport phase has been far easier for researchers to deal with, they knew the site was coming back after the BBC shut the doors and turned out the lights at the end of September. Rupert really was a period of the unknown, with little cells of researchers setting up all sorts of groups to keep each other informed of what was going on. This time we moved en masse aware of where we thought we were heading and hoping that when the switch was pressed to turn the lights back on, that well. It would work.
Well it has, and the researchers are already gathering to start once more on yet another new home. Not so much journey of the sorcerer but at least journey of H2G2.
It's been an amazing journey in collaboration and community action, not to mention being Incredibly Cool and excellent good fun. And this is only the start.... thanks for the support Stephen. Always.
ReplyDeleteBen